For over a century federal law has attempted to regulate the sources and amounts of money in elections. The result proves to some that money is a hydraulic force: efforts to channel it only result in broken dikes and washed away dams. Others believe that the problem is inartful drafting, failed regulators, partisan greediness, the leveraging of the tax code to subvert the campaign finance laws, and a Supreme Court which has no understanding of how politics and the legislative system actually work. Which is it?